Rick Astley's career revival may be based on people being tricked into seeing him, but the 80s pop star is now counting on fans buying actual tickets. Not only is Astley again headlining the Here and Now nostalgia tour, but the man who promised to never give you up, let you down, run around and desert you ... is writing a movie musical.
New York Cowboy will tell the story of a small-town boy who moves to New York City in the 80s. It is not, in other words, an autobiography.
"My wife's now a movie producer so I read a lot of scripts and I'm really passionate about films," Astley said in a recent interview. "One day I thought, 'Well, why don't I write one?' And it turned into a musical – but not for the stage."
Astley "hooked up with a guy in California", he told the Times, and after writing a script the two are now seeking an agent. "I'm not fooling myself – nothing may come of it and I totally understand that, but as a process I have loved it. When you're writing frothy pop songs the lyrics can be a bit 'whatever', they are hooky and you just sing them because they work. But writing these songs ... Do they call that a libretto?"
Astley's appearance on the Here and Now tour is unexpected. Despite headlining the show last year, he hadn't intended to participate in 2009 – until Boy George was sent to jail. "Poor George," Astley said now. "I don't know him but it seems such a waste, somebody as sharp and intelligent as that being sent to prison."
Though Astley's a fitting billing along with Kim Wilde, Howard Jones and Brother Beyond, these days he's most keen on the Luddites – a covers band he plays in with his mates. "I play drums and sing with my two friends Graham and Simon and we play East Molesey Cricket Club every now and again," he said. "We were going to call ourselves Mid-Life Crisis because that's what it is."
LAGOS (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.
Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.
"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.
"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.
Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.
NEW ORLEANS - U.S. Sen. David Vitter may be facing a re-election challenge from, of all people, an adult film actress.
Baton Rouge native Stormy Daniels said she's surprised by the attention the idea is getting. CNN this week aired a segment on the effort to draft Daniels for the 2010 contest -- an effort that originated online.
"Originally, the focus wasn't even about making me a candidate," she said. "I think it was about bringing attention to the senate race in general. Then the response was overwhelmingly positive, and I think everyone is just running with it."
Vitter, a first-term Republican, will likely be challenged by more traditional politicians next year. His self-described "serious sin" -- his suspected patronage of the "D.C. madam" -- has made him a top target of the Democratic Party.
New Orleanian Zack Hudson launched the Web site, which touts Daniels as an advocate for children and a successful example of women in business.
A Louisiana GOP spokesman dismissed the "Stormy for Senate" concept.
Daniels said she is considering the idea of candidacy and may embark on a listening tour of the state.
"I am always up for a good fight," she said. "And I think anyone that knows me is more than aware of that. Politics can't be any dirtier of a job than the one I am already in."
TOKYO (Reuters) - Resource-poor Japan just discovered a new source of mineral wealth -- sewage.
A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a higher gold yield from sludge than can be found at some of the world's best mines. An official in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, said the high percentage of gold found at the Suwa facility was probably due to the large number of precision equipment manufacturers in the vicinity that use the yellow metal. The facility recently recorded finding 1,890 grammes of gold per tonne of ash from incinerated sludge.
That is a far higher gold content than Japan's Hishikari Mine, one of the world's top gold mines, owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd, which contains 20-40 grammes of the precious metal per tonne of ore.
The prefecture is so far due to receive 5 million yen ($55,810) for the gold, minus expenses.
It expects to earn about 15 million yen for the fiscal year to the end of March from the gold it has retrieved from the ashes of incinerated sludge.
"How much we actually receive will depend on gold prices at the time," the official said.
Some gold industry officials expect prices this year to top the all-time high above $1,030 per ounce set in 2008, on buying by investors worried about the deepening economic downturn. (Reporting by Miho Yoshikawa; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Wednesday, 11 February 2009 16:05
A British couple who threw a Wild West fancy dress party to celebrate renewing their wedding vows were stunned when armed police officers showed up.
Roy and Val Worthington warned their local force in Leicestershire, central England, that they and around 80 of their friends would be sporting Stetson hats and toy guns for the occasion.
But several police cars carrying armed officers in flak jackets and a helicopter still turned up at the Moira Arms pub in Castle Donington as the party was in full swing on Saturday night.
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'Somebody had phoned up (the police) and said there was a man walking around Donington with guns,' Val Worthington said.
'I suppose they were right to have responded but it was a little bit over the top.'
Leicestershire Police defended its actions, saying it had to treat all reports of firearms as genuine.
'People need to remember that it is an offence to carry a gun, whether real or imitation, in a public place and should bear this in mind when attending fancy dress parties,' a spokesman said.
'It can cause real distress to those who witness it and may result in arrests or charges.'
Orphaned hedgehogs adopt cleaning brush as their mother
Last updated at 14:22 27 August 2007
Four tiny orpahned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother.
The four inch long creatures are being hand-reared by staff at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park in Ashurst, Hants.
Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre's cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.
The smells on the brush, which is used to sweep a yard, remind the hedgehogs of their natural habitat while the texture reminds them of their mother.
Manager John Crooks, 41, said: "They are a bit like human babies - they need activities to keep them busy.
"Because they have very poor eyesight you have to appeal to their sense of smell and touch by giving them different scents and textures.
"They like natural scents and have enjoyed playing with our cleaning brushes, soil, leaves, flower pots and the like.
"They particularly seem to enjoy rubbing against the brush.
"It may sound odd but I imagine the bristles feel a bit like their mum."
He added: "Three of the hedgehogs came to us because their mum was sadly crushed by a council palette truck at one of their depots.
"They are only a couple of weeks old.
"The fourth one is a little bit older and was found wandering around a back garden in the middle of the day.
"The home owner left it alone for a while to see if it would find its mum but after a few hours it was still by itself so she brought it into to us."
The hedgehogs will be fed until they are full-sized and then they will be released back into the wild.
John said: "We are feeding them milk powder mixed with kitten food - but they don't like fish flavour - they prefer nice meaty chunks.
"When they get older they will move onto proper cat food and will occasionally be given slugs and snails as a treat.
"There has been a real surge in slugs this year because of the wet weather so hopefully that will mean a good year for hedgehogs too.
"I would urge people not to kill garden slugs with pellets because the poison will be passed on to hedgehogs and a build up of poison could be fatal.
"If the weather is good they could be released in a month or so, otherwise we will feed them over the winter so they do not hibernate and then relase them in spring."
He added: "They are quite a handful and each has their own character.
"My God! They killed Amy Rose! What are we going to do!"
-"Eh, just put a dress on a cleaning brush and call it a day."
"...I...think that might work, actually."
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.
A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.
"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.
Political divide
Edelman spends part of his time helping companies such as Microsoft and AOL detect advertising fraud. Another consulting client runs dozens of adult websites, though he says he is not at liberty to identify the firm.
That company did, however, provide Edelman with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.
After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states – online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog – and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.
Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.
Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
Old-fashioned values
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.
To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.
States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."
"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.
A German frozen food company hopes to raise sales with a new product: Obama fingers. The tender, fried chicken bits come with a tasty curry sauce. The company says it was unaware of the possible racist overtones of the product.
Selling products has, of course, become a bit more difficult than usual these days. No wonder then that companies everywhere are turning to optimistic marketing messages in an effort to counteract the steady drum beat of negativity coming from front page headlines around the globe.
Many sales executives have drawn the same conclusion: What better poster child for hope than US President Barack Obama? There are Obama dolls, Obama T-shirts, Obama soap-on-a-rope. There is even Obama thong underwear on offer.
Not wanting to miss the boat, a German food company has now gotten into the act. Sprehe, a company that has all manner of frozen delicacies on offer, has come up with a new product it calls "Obama Fingers." Far from being real digits, though, the "fingers" in question are "tender, juicy pieces of chicken breast, coated and fried," as the product packaging claims.
Fried chicken, in other words. With a curry dip.
"We noticed that American products and the American way of eating are trendy at the moment," Judith Witting, sales manager for Sprehe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Americans are more relaxed. Not like us stiff Germans, like (Chancellor Angela) Merkel."
The idea, she claimed, was to get in on the Obama-mania which is continuing to grip Germany. The word "fingers" in the name refers to the fact that it is a finger food. "It's like hotdogs," Witting said. "No one would ever think they are actually from dogs."
For Americans in Germany, though, there is a risk that the product might be seen as racially insensitive. Fried chicken has long been associated with African-Americans in the US -- naming strips of fried chicken after the first black president could cause some furrowing of brows.
Witting told SPIEGEL ONLINE the connection never even occurred to her. "It was supposed to be a homage to the American lifestyle and the new US president," she said.
It's only racist because we are told to think it's racist. This is perfectly innocent, and delicious. I would love to dip some Obama fingers in some special Obama sauce.
This is as racsist as calling a black guy "black".
White people and the media freak out when a white guy says something like, "Blacks have an extra muscle that allows them to run faster." That isn't racsist, its just well, true. Blacks don't freak out, white guys freak out for black guys, falsely anticipating their possible racsist interpretation of the statement. Saying, "Blacks are fast, but aren't bright," is a racsist statement. Obviously, I don't mean that, I'm just using it as an example.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/02/rick-astley-movie-musical
YORK, Pa. -- York police want to speak with the person who posted a sign on a home commenting on drug activity in the area.
The sign appeared Tuesday evening on the South Penn Street residence.
The sign reads, "Deer Crack Dealer, You kin sell crack on this block and the York Police will not stop you."
York City Police Commissioner Mark Whitman said that police have done a serious job of cracking down on drugs in the neighborhood.
A neighbor told News 8 that drugs were a problem in the area but have not been recently.
Earlier in the week, a different message appeared directly on the home's window.
That message read, "Deer Crack Dealer, You kin sell crack on this block and the York City Police will not stop you. They fear you. Crack Rules!!"
A brick was thrown through the window, police said. After it was boarded up, the new message appeared.
-"Eh, just put a dress on a cleaning brush and call it a day."
"...I...think that might work, actually."
White people and the media freak out when a white guy says something like, "Blacks have an extra muscle that allows them to run faster." That isn't racsist, its just well, true. Blacks don't freak out, white guys freak out for black guys, falsely anticipating their possible racsist interpretation of the statement. Saying, "Blacks are fast, but aren't bright," is a racsist statement. Obviously, I don't mean that, I'm just using it as an example.
I don't think I spelled racsist right.